“The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced on Monday that it will withhold $95 million from the $270 million in grants it had planned to give China” after “months of discussion between the charity and Chinese officials,” China Daily reports (Shan, 10/31). Global Fund spokesperson Jon Liden “said … that during recent discussions, China moved to take over most training expenses and other costs that allowed the saving of about $95 million from unpaid grants,” the Associated Press writes (10/31).

A study published Wednesday in the Journal of the International AIDS Society assessed how the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s “investments in HIV programs were targeted to key populations in relation to disease burden and national income,” concluding, “There has been a sustained scale up of the Global…

“The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will transfer management of a $28.77 million HIV/AIDS grant from Mali’s national AIDS council, the Haut Conseil de Lutte contre le Sida (the High Council for the Fight Against AIDS, or HCLNS), to a new principal recipient at the end of the year” after mismanagement of funds was discovered in the country, a Global Fund press release reports (10/19). “The Global Fund said in a statement that it will suspend funding all but essential services under the grant until a new structure can be found to manage the money,” the Associated Press writes (Vogl, 10/19).

“Nearly a third of all countries affected by malaria are on course to eliminate the mosquito-borne disease over the next 10 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday … [i]n a progress report (.pdf) published by the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partnership at the start of an international Malaria Forum conference in Seattle,” Reuters reports (Kelland, 10/17). “The [WHO] has awarded malaria-free certification to three nations in the past four years, according to the report,” Agence France-Presse notes, adding, “If current successes in the fight against malaria continue, more than three million lives can be saved by 2015 with the elimination of the disease in eight to 10 countries, RBM said” (10/17).

Investments to keep 3.5 million people living with HIV on antiretroviral drugs provided by programs co-financed through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria through 2020 will cost an estimated $14.2 billion, but “the financial savings would amount to between $12 billion and $34 billion,” according to a study published in the journal PLoS One, Sarah Boseley reports in her “Global Health Blog” in the Guardian (10/5).

“For the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria] is an invaluable partner, and the progress they have achieved is bringing us closer than ever to the reality of global health equity,” Joe Cerrell, director of the Gates Foundation’s European office, writes in an AlertNet opinion piece, adding, “Every day, programs supported by the Global Fund save at least 4,400 lives.”

Based on a report released last week by a high-level independent review panel on fiduciary controls and oversight mechanisms at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, “[t]he changes needed at the Fund are clearly substantial,” according to a Lancet editorial. “However, as the report notes, there is ‘nothing that cannot be fixed by appropriate reform.’ Whether governments in this era of austerity will stick by the Fund as it evolves is now a major concern. But there are good reasons for donors to keep funding the Global Fund,” the editorial states.

“The Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria approved an action plan Monday in response to recommendations made recently by the High-Level Independent Review Panel on Fiduciary Controls and Oversight Mechanism (HLP),” the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog reports, adding, “The board stated that it accepts the underlying analysis made by the panel and that it ‘presents a compelling case for a rapid and urgent transformation of the Global Fund.'”

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, “[a]long with our partners, both donors and implementers, [is] changing the story of scores of nations that were once devastated by three killer diseases — diseases which seemed invincible,” Global Fund Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece, adding “we are now saving more than one million lives every year.”

In this entry in the Huffington Post’s “Impact” blog, Kolleen Bouchane, director of ACTION, an international partnership of advocates working to mobilize resources to treat and prevent the spread of tuberculosis (TB), examines the need for improved TB vaccines and diagnostics in order to curb the spread of multidrug-resistant TB, especially among children, and highlights ACTION’s new report (.pdf), “Children and Tuberculosis: Exposing a Hidden Epidemic,” which she says “exposes the link between TB and orphaned and vulnerable children, malnourished children or children living with HIV.”